Possible Upgrade Path - Intel Guru's?

[zanthor]

I'm currently running an AMD X2 6000, nVidia 7900gt, 2gb ram, etc... I'm not happy with the performance I get single instance OR multiboxing, while everything runs pretty solid I still dont seem to get what I'm really after out of it...

Running 1 or two instances of wow I get around 30-50fps on the main and have the alt locked at 15fps... I am pretty sure the bottleneck in my system is either video ram (256mb) or the fact that WoW is simply optimized for Intel better... and the multiboxing of course would benefit from Quad Core...

My plans are to do this in stages to avoid unnecessary expense...

First: upgrade video card to an 8800gt 1gb card, this is $300 and would remove my thoughts that the video may be the culprit. I know the 1gb shows negligible difference in benchmarks over the 512mb cards, but the price isn't horribly different either, so for $300 I'm willing to do it.

This should either show me a performance gain with 1 & 2 clients, or not. If not, the problems obviously somewhere else.

Second: Upgrade to 4gb of ram, this is cheap now @ $130-150 and is needed for 5 boxing on 1 pc either way, I can run 3 no my system now without problems, 4 I start to thrash, and 5 is unplayable in any major city or crowded area... In the event that this + the video card ends up with 30+ fps on all 5 clients I'd stop here...

Finally in the event that a 1gb 8800gt and 4gb of ram didn't do the trick, I'd replace my mainboard/cpu with an intel based quad core over my X2 6000. I know that intels been blowing the doors off AMD lately, its' sad but such is life...

https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=7815166&WishListTitle=5BoxFriendly

The wish list is the parts I've scoped out for this, I already have over 1.5tb worth of sata drives, my load times are amazingly fast so I'm confident thats not a bottleneck... I've got a sufficient power supply, etc... (Antec 660w)

So, my main question is am I picking out compatible parts, I don't want to ship this shit and find out I got the wrong main board/ram/etc... I went with DFI because while they aren't a huge brand, I have their main boards in both of my current systems as well as two friends, I like the layout, of the boards, the feature sets are very robust and they are priced right. They have also proved to be very reliable.

[Gallo]

Depending on your budget, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the Q6600 option. I myself just bought the parts for a machine (Q6600 OC'ed to 3ghz, 4gb RAM, 8800GT 512mb). This machine has been doing quite well on 5 boxing.

If you're going for a Q6600, consider getting http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A1938452 this version over the OEM version that you chose. The G0 stepping processor has shown to outperform other Q6600s and is much better for overclocking if that is even a faint possibility for you. For the extra $20, you can't go wrong.

[elo]

I'm running 4 instances on a 2.3Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4gb of DDR2, 7800GTS PNY Video Card. I don't have actual frame rate numbers but have no complaints. Just FWIW.

[-silencer-]

*If* you're going to buy a new cpu and are planning an spending more than $100 on it, the Q6600 is by far the best deal for around $260. However, I'm running 5 instances on an overclocked E6600 and am satisfied with the playability. My current complaint has to deal with dual-view from an 8800GTX over two different sized monitors, but once my 2nd 24" arrives, I'm sure I'll have better frames. What size monitor(s) are you running? Are you using dual-view or horizontal span? If you're using dual-view, you can expect far less than stellar performance from your videocard, regardless of model. Your 256mb 7900GT should be able to run multiple instances of WoW across 2 20" monitors in horizontal span without too much trouble. Since you said you're not happy with your single instance of WoW performance, it's either your CPU or videocard (or memory if you've got a ton of other apps in the background). You can't go wrong with quad-core or the 8800gt, but knowing what resolutions you're trying to run the game at would help..

As for memory, I'm running 4GB on WinXP 32bit (~3.2GB available), and 60% of it is in use with 5 instances of WoW up, so since DDR2 memory is so cheap, go ahead and get the full 4GB (~3.2GB in 32bit).